She touches the key ring again with a small index finger, tracing the jagged ridges of the key’s teeth as if she can tell just by touch whether it belongs in her house.
“I suppose… maybe this? I just don’t remember. Looks a bit like our front door key, but I can’t be sure.”
“Have you changed the locks since it happened?”
“I should have, but it seemed so final.” Her voice is still very small, very low. “Didn’t want him locked out of his own house—it was like admitting to myself that I’d never hear his key in the door again.”
I push the brass key across the table toward her.
“Then you should take it home,” I say. “See if it fits.”
Carys
Running was pure. It was simplicity. There was no day-to-day, no juggling all of the usual crap that came with everything else. Not having ten things bouncing around inside your head at the same time. With running there was only one thing: don’t stop. Keep going. Don’t surrender to the burning in your lungs, the iron-heaviness of your legs, don’t listen to the little voice in your head that says just take a little rest, give yourself a breather, just for a minute.
Carys knew better than to listen to the little voice.
She also knew it was bad form to stick to the same old route, week after week, however pretty the scenery might be. Even if it was the most accurate way of comparing one time with another. Overall, it was better to get used to novelty, to terrain she’d never seen before. Especially if she was going to have a chance at that ultra-marathon in Norway. The local marathon had been fine, and the Iron Man and the other events, but it was better to challenge herself, to do something different—she would be able to get more in sponsorship for the charity that way. She’d be able to achieve the target she’d set herself by the end of the year, keep the promise she’d made.
She climbed through the stile, up the track toward the big field, the familiar burn in her legs and lungs telling her to keep going, keep pushing. Rolling countryside stretching out below the ridge as she climbed.
Being out here, doing something, anything, was preferable to the helplessness she’d felt as her dad slowly faded away, a spectator to the slow cruelty of a disease as it ravaged his body. That vast bottomless feeling that nothing could be done apart from sitting and waiting for the inevitable. And, most important of all, it was peaceful. The quietest route, especially on a weekday. You might see a few ramblers, the occasional runner, but mostly it was just sheep out here. No ogling teenagers, no catcalling builders, no white van men hooting and shouting disgusting things as she ran by. No idiot ex who wasn’t willing to accept that it was over between them.
Out here she was unencumbered, just the key on its key ring zipped inside her pocket, stopwatch running on her wrist, trainers pounding the path. It was pure. Simple.
She nodded to a runner coming the other way, dressed in dark orange and pale green. Something vaguely familiar about the stride, the smile. It would be good to have a pacer, Carys thought. A running buddy to give her that little bit extra motivation when the mornings were cold and dark, like this one.
Someone else who understood the beauty of it all.
28
My phone buzzes twice in my pocket as I’m unclipping Daisy from her booster seat on the drive. Callum is already out of the car and heading for the house ahead of his sister, who scrambles to catch up. His futuristic outfit is in tatters, strips of silver foil hanging from his jacket, but he seems to have had a good time at school, telling me at enthusiastic length on the ride home about a game of tag with his friends during morning break which had ended with Josh being sent to the headteacher’s office.
I gather the book bags, swimming bags, coats, and pieces of artwork from the back seat and hook them over one arm, digging out my phone with my free hand. The text messages are from Charlie Parish, Maxine’s son, the first one letting me know that the key didn’t fit any of the doors in their house. The second text has a link to a website called DiscoverImage365 that will do a reverse image search. I click on it and begin to scroll through the instructions, which all look quite straightforward, I just need to upload—
A high-pitched squeal of alarm makes my head jerk up.
Daisy.
I shove the phone into my pocket and run around to find the kids standing at either side of the two wide stone steps that lead up to the front door. Daisy has a hand over her mouth, both herand her brother staring at something on the ground between them. As I approach, I get a glimpse of something small and pale on the doorstep, an animal, motionless.
My first thought is,Steve, please don’t let it be Steve,please don’t let him have got out of the house, out onto the road where some idiot was driving too fast.
But it’s not Steve.
As I get closer I can make out the plump, inert shape of a large pigeon right by the front door. Lying on its side, wings furled back, claws curled tight. The bird’s tiny eyes are half-closed, a darkening of blood across its beak and head.
Daisy takes my hand, her voice trembling.
“What happened to the bird, Daddy?”
She moves as if to touch the small body but I hold on to her.
“I think he just flew into the window, Daze.” I look up at the door, but there’s no obvious mark anywhere on the glass. “Sometimes birds do that. They get confused when they’re flying around very fast and they bump into things.”
But even as I say it, I know it doesn’t make sense. The glass in the top half of the front door is frosted and colored in small panels, there’s no reflection to confuse a bird in flight. It had happened once or twice before at our old house, but only ever against the French windows, which had big panes of clear glass.
A flush of unease rises up from my stomach.
